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Philosophica 55 (1995,. 1) pp. 87-116
WHAT MAKES HUMAN DIFFERENCES INTO CULTURAL DIFFERENCES?
Harry van den Bouwhuijsen
"A historian may be deaf', said Raymond Firth (1951: 19),
"ajurist may be blind, a philosopher may be both, but it is
essential to an anthropolo-gist to hear what people are saying, to
see what people are doing". In his words we still hear the echos of
what Jarvie (1964) has named 'The Revolution in Anthropology', a
'revolution' which was ignited by Malinowski's clarion call:
(to) go out into the villages, and see the natives at work in
gardens, on the beach, in the jungle; (to) sail with them to
distant sandbanks and to foreign tribes; and (to) observe them in
fishing, trading, and ceremonial overseas expeditions (Malinowski
1961 (1922): 126-127).
Countless anthropologists have followed Malinowski's
'revolutionary' appeal, going out to hear what people were saying
and to see what people were doing. Their approach - which
eventually would be recognized as the anthropological approach -
was arrived at by converting practical needs into methodological
virtues. Basically it was constituted by three perspectives: (1)
the outsider's perspective; (2) the cultural perspective and (3)
the comparative perspective. The anthropologist who went out to the
field stayed isolated with 'his' tribe for quite some time, having
just himself for his main instrument of research. This being the
situation, there was nothing for it but "to talk to the man in the
paddy or the woman in the bazaar, largely free-form, in a one'thing
leads to another and everything leads to everything else manner"
(Geertz 1985: 623). From this forced, 'existential' outsider's
perspective he gradually tried to clarify what goes on ( ... ), to
reduce the puzzlement" (Geertz 1973: 6).
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88 HARRY V AN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
Like the outsider's perspective, the cultural perspective
resulted 'logically' from the (isolated) situation in which the
anthropologist found himself in the field.
Those people with pierced noses or body tattoos, or who buried
their dead in the trees, may never have been the solitaries we took
them to be, but we were. The anthropologist who went off to the
Talensi, the tundra or Tikopia did it all: economics, politics,
law, religion; psychology and land tenure, dance and kinship; how
children were raised, houses built, seals hunted, stories told.
There was no one else around, save occasionally and at a collegial
distance, another anthro-pologist (Geertz 1985: 623; italics in
original).
The culture concept provided the brackets round the puzzle and
the key to its solution. It told the anthropologist the
Shakespearian wisdom that "(t)hough this be madness, yet there is
method in't". That is to say: it provided him with a coherent
object of study (Herbert 1991: 150). And it allowed him to present
his experiences in a form the home-front could understand.
Eventually "(t)he concept of culture has come to be so com-pletely
associated with anthropological thinking", Roy Wagner (1975: 1)
rightly said, "that ( ... ) we could define an anthropologist as
someone who uses the word 'culture' habitually".
It may be clear that the 'professional stranger', who had to
rely on his own experiences, had no choice but to use the tacit
knowledge of his own culture as a point of reference when studying
the target culture. It may even be maintained that only the culture
shock involved in his 'being out there' taught him to see the
'natural' things he had learned at his mother's knee as part of his
culture. This is not to say that Levi-Strauss was right in arguing
that ethnographic work by its deepest logic expresses hostility
towards the ethnographer's own society (Levi-Strauss 1955). But it
is to say that by its deepest logic-of-the-situation the
out-sider's perspective and the cultural perspective are inherently
compara-tive.
Culture and human differences
However, halfway the four decades that separate us from Firth's
echos,
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 89
'The Revolution in Anthropology' eventually lost its momentum.
From the end of the 1960s onwards the once so 'revolutionary'
anthropological endeavour has come under severe attack for a
peculiar intermingling of political, moral and epistemological
reasons (for an analysis of this pecu-liar intermingling see Van
den Bouwhuijsen, Claes and Derde 1995). One of the effects of these
criticisms has been the outbreak among the anthro-pological
community of a fast-spreading "epistemological hypochondria
concerning how one can know that anything one says about other
forms of life is as a matter of fact so" (Geertz 1988: 71). Maybe,
it was argued, ethnographics do not offer a window to the culture
of the other, as 're-volutionary' anthropologists had always
pretended. Maybe these 'ethno-graphic worlds' are just imaginary
worlds, literary fictions, in which 'the other' is nothing but an
artefact of the text in which he takes shape (McGrane 1989; Mason
1990; cf Coward and Ellis 1977: 45-66). May-be, for short,
'revolutionary' anthropologists actually had been blind to what
other people were doing and deaf to what these people were
saying.
In the wake of these criticisms bel ief in the descriptive
adequacy of the culture concept has been undermined up to the point
that it has been suggested - at least from the European side - that
perhaps we better give up "this largely American distinction"
(Goody 1993: 10; emphasis added) altogether (ibid.: 19). Of course
Goody's picture of the object of anthropology, neatly divided by
the Atlantic into 'social' and 'cultural', stretches the truth.
But, for sake of the argument, let us hold on to it for a while,
and ask what is the gist of Goody's criticism. "If the cultural is
granted distinct analytical status", says Goody, "that does not
necessarily make it a suitable field of disciplinary concentration"
(Goody 1993: 11). And why does it not? It is, says Goody, because
what the culture concept refers to is nothing but an aspect of the
social.
In a widespread European view, culture is seen as the content of
social relations, not as sO,me distinct entity (oo.). That is to
say, it is the 'customary' part of social action, not one which
constitutes the entire field of study and about which one can have
a separate body of theory. (oo.) (l)t is hard to see any advantage
that has accrued from treating the ideational level, including the
level of symbols and meanings, as a distinct domain (ibid.;
emphasis added).
In the italicized sentence we see the core of the
misunderstanding. Cul-
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90 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
ture is taken to be that part of the world that was carved out
to fit "the structure of departments at Harvard University" (ibid.:
10).
Those who follow Talcott Parsons call for the recognition of a
sepa-rate field of 'cultural' studies concerned with the analysis
of 'sym-bols' and 'meaning', a field that stands opposed to, or at
least dis-tinct from, the social ( ... ). ( ... ) (Accordingly)
psychologists were allocated the personality system, sociologists
the social, and 'cultural anthropologists', as they are often known
in the States, the cultural (ibid.).
This ironic depiction of the traditional opposition between
British social anthropology and American cultural anthropology
certainly has a point: disciplinary allotments often do play an
important role in defining objects of research. This goes for
culture as well as for other phenomena. Goody's depiction
nevertheless completely passes over the fact that from the second
half of the eighteenth century onwards 'culture' has gradually
become one of the main concepts with which Western man has
described his historical self-consciousness (Lemaire 1976: 39 ff).
The question is: what kind of experience did it express? Obviously
it could express a lot of different experiences, as "even before
the last decade of the eighteenth century, the proliferation of
meanings led the German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder to
remark of 'culture' that "nothing was more indeterminate than this
word" (Barnard 1968: 614). We need not go into details here. For
the present purpose it is sufficient to conclude that these various
meanings all aimed at expressing (and strengthening) a sense of
identity by appealing to (and intensifying) an experience of
difference.
Culture: the lack of theory
This is not the place to reiterate and discuss all the
criticisms that have been voiced of the culture concept during the
past decennia. In this paper I will focus instead on one issue that
has received little attention so far, taking for my point of
departure Kroeber and Kluckhohn's (1963: 357) conclusion that the
absence of a viable theory ·of culture is the main source of
problems with the culture concept. As these authors rightly argue
"(c)oncepts have a way of coming to a dead end unless they are
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 91
bound together in a testable theory (ibid.). Put differently,
the main source of problems with the culture concept is that we'
lack a testable theory specifying what makes differences between
groups of people into cultural differences. Consequently the
culture concept is used in almost as many ways as there are authors
(cj Keesing 1974: 73, note 2). Only a testable theory can remedy
this conceptual proliferation and allow us to describe particular
differences between groups of people as the facts of a culture
(Vermeersch 1977). . Of course the space available here is not
sufficient to develop such a theory. Nor am I so presumptious to
pretend that I could do so all on my own. What I can do in this
paper, however, is contributing some conceptual material to the
project of formulating a testable theory of cultural differences, a
project which is currently being carried out at the Department of
Comparati.ve Science of Cultures at the University of Gent. I will
argue that one of the major shortcomings of the culture concept as
it has been used in anthropology until now is that it has no
adequate way of describing differences between groups of people.
This is because a logical feature of relations of similarity and
difference is systematically overlooked, viz. that these relations
are not transitive (Hesse 1974: 13-14). One of the few authors who,
to my knowledge, have seen this point is Balagangadhara, who in his
(The Heathen in His Blindness ... " Asia, the West and the Dynamic
of Religion (1994) has argued that if cultures are different, we at
least have to allow the possibility that experiences of otherness
may also be different (Balagangadhara 1994: 512). A viable theory
of cultural differences, then, has to take into account the
implica-tions of the intransitivity of relations of differences and
similarities. How can this be done? I will develop some ideas on
this issue by comparing two ways in which cultural differences have
been described in 'revolutio-nary' anthropology. The first one I
take from Evans-Pritchard's Witch-craft, Oracles and Magic among
the Azande (1937). As Barnes (1974: 27) has rightly remarked, this
work is effectively the standard example for use in discussions of
this kind since it has played an essential role in the British
'rationality debate', which followed the publication of Win-ch's
paper 'Understanding a Primitive Society' (1964; reprinted in
Wil-son, ed. 1970).1 I will show that Evans-Pritchard's approach is
incoherent by its own standards and examine the reason why it is.
Next I will dis-cuss an alternative approach, which I take from
Deborah Tooker's des-cription of the Akha of Northern Thailand
(Tooker 1990). I will show
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92 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
that Tooker's approach is not based on the kind of
presuppositions which caused Evans-Pritchard so much trouble.
Consequently Tooker is able to describe the Akha as different from
the West in a way which is not constituted by a Western sense of
difference. I will conclude this paper by answering the question
what can be learned from this comparison as regards the formulation
of a theory of culture.
17le Azande Poison Oracle
One particular case from Evans-Pritchard's voluminous book on
Zande witchcraft, oracles and magic that has attracted a lot of
attention concerns the Azande poison oracle. 2 It is on this case
that I will focus here. The poison in question is called benge. It
is the extract of a wild forest cree-per (Evans-Pritchard 1937:
314). Benge was administered to a fowl and a question answerable by
a simple 'yes' or 'no' was then addressed aloud to it (ibid.: 295
ff.). The fate of the chicken was taken to be the answer of the
oracle. Certain checks were built in this procedure, how-ever. The
benge was tested before it was used in the oracle (ibid.: 281). And
questions were always put twice, in such a way that if a fowl died
in the first test, another fowl had to survive the second test for
the judg-ment of the oracle to be accepted as valid (ibid.: 299).
(For further details see Evans-Pritchard 1937: 258-351.)
Before discussing the poison oracle, Evans-Pritchard thinks it
wise to address the home-front by saying:
I must warn the reader that we are trying to analyse behaviour
rather than belief. Azande have little theory about their oracles
and do not feel the need for doctrines (ibid.: 314; emphasis
added).
Some pages later he expresses the same warning in even stronger
terms ('little theory' is replaced by 'no theory' now). This time,
however, he adds an important piece of information concerning the
traditional status of the oracle.
Azande have no theory about it; they do not know why it works,
but only that it does work. Oracles have always existed and have
always
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 93
worked as they work now because such is their nature (ibid.:
320; emphasis added).3
In fact, says Evans-Pritchard, Azande are interested in the
poison oracle only as part of their tradition.
Proper benge is endowed with potency by man's abstinence and his
knowledge of tradition and will only function in the condition of a
seance (ibid.: 314; emphasis added).
After having said this, however, Evans-Pritchard immediately
equates tradition with traditional beliefs.
(I)t is necessary to point out that Zande ideas (emphasis added)
about benge are very different from notions about poisons prevalent
among the educated classes of Europe. To us it is a poison, but not
to them (ibid.: 314). It is certain that Azande do not regard the
reactions of fowls to benge and the action of benge on fowls as a
natural process, that is to say, a process conditioned only by
physical causes. ( ... ) Indeed, we may ask whether they have any
notion that approximates to what we mean when we speak of physical
causes (ibid.: 315).
No doubt the educated classes of Europe have often shown a very
good understanding of the nature of poison. But why would a Zande
have a very different notion of it? Evans-Pritchard is ambiguous
about this point. On the one hand he cannot but admit that Azande
actually have a "crude common-sense notion of poisons". They know
that certain vegetable products can be lethal without attributing
supra-sensible properties to them (ibid.). They also know that
benge is poisonous. On the other hand, however, unlike educated
Europeans, Azande "have no idea that it might be possible to kill
people by adding it to their food" (316; emphasis added). But then
again, sometimes a fowl that has been used in an oracle is eaten.
When this is the case the fowl is cleansed of poison first: neck
and stomach are removed. "(T)his action", Evans-Pritchard has to
admit, "would imply a knowledge of the natural properties of benge
that they refuse to allow in other situations" (ibid.: 317).
Obviously Evans-Pritchard - a 'revolutionary' anthropologist if
ever there was one - has great trouble in understanding the poison
oracle
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against the background of Zande culture. "It is not always easy
to recon-cile Zande doctrines (sic!) with their behaviour and with
one another", he says (ibid.: 317; emphasis added). This, however,
is an odd complaint as some pages before he has warned his reader
that he was trying to analyse behaviour rather than belief. Azande,
he just told the homefront, have no theory about their oracles and
do not feel the need for doctrines. So what is the point of trying
to reconcile something which is not there, with the behaviour one
is observing? Nevertheless, despite his own warning, this is
exactly what Evans-Pritchard keeps doing:
Azande observe the action of the poison oracle as we observe it,
but their observations are always subordinated to their beliefs and
are incorporated into their beliefs and made to explain them and
justify them (ibid.: 319; emphasis added). As a matter of fact,
Azande act very much as we would act in I ike circumstances and
they make the same kind of observations as we would make. ( ... )
But Azande are dominated by all overwhelming faith which prevents
them from making experiments,from generalizing contradictions
between tests, between verdicts of different oracles, and between
all the oracles and experience (ibid.: 318; emphasis added).
The conclusion cannot be avoided that Evans-Pritchard is
inconsistent by his own standards. After announcing that he would
focus on behaviour, he is focusing on beliefs instead. What can be
the source of this ambi-guity?
Beliefs and Actions
Evans-Pritchard's ambiguity has to do with what he perceives to
be the lack of coherence between Zande bel iefs on the one hand and
between Zande beliefs and behaviour on the other hand. What does
this incohe- , rence boil down to? There are two issues involved
here, the first of which causes Evans-Pritchard little trouble
because he can easily explain it. This first issue concerns the
fact that Zande beliefs often seem to contradict each other. Like
Goody would do after him (see Goody 1977) Evans-Pritchard explains
this lack of coherence of the Zande 'belief-system' from the lack
of literacy.
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 95
(T)he contradiction between ( ... ) beliefs and ( ... )
observations only become a generalized and glaring contradiction
when they are re-corded side by side in the pages of an
ethnographic treatise. ( ... ) But in real life these bits of
knowledge do not form part of an indivisible concept, so that when
a man thinks of benge he must think of all the details I have
recorded here. They are functions of different situ-ations and are
uncoordinated. Hence the contradictions so apparent to us do not
strike a Zande (ibid.: 319; emphasis in original).
So the apparent incoherence of the Zande 'belief-system' can -
partly at least - be attributed to the fact that Zandebeliefs have
never been recorded and systematized in a manner which is only
possible in a literate culture. The implicit assumption is that,
were these beliefs written down and systematized, then the
contradictions would be apparent to the Azande. In this view it is
literacy that advances coherence and rationality (see Goody, ed.,
1968; Goody 1977; 1986; 1987).
The second issue involves the supposed lack of coherence between
Zande beliefs and actions. It is this second issue which is the
real source of Evans-Pritchard's difficulties with grasping the
poison oracle against the background of Zande culture. In order to
compensate for what Zande culture allegedly had left off,
Evans-Pritchard took the trouble to record and systematize Zande
beliefs and subsequently invited his informants to draw conclusions
from them. Thus he asked them what would happen if benge were
administered to a fowl without a question being put? (Tra-dition
says that benge is only effective if a question is addressed to the
oracle.) Or if more benge was administered to a fowl than the dose
prescribed by tradition? Or if benge were added to the food of an
enemy? His efforts, though, were in vain. He could only come to the
conclusion that the Azande were not interested in this kind of
problems at all.
The Zande does not know what would happen, he is not interested
in what would happen, and no one has ever been fool enough to waste
good oracle poison in making such pointless experiments,
experiments which only a European could imagine (ibid;: 314;
em-phasis added). ( ... ) Were a European to make a test which
proved Zande opinion wrong they would stand amazed at the credulity
of the European who attempted such an experiment. If the fowl died
they
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would simply say that it was not good benge. The very fact of
the fowl dying proves to them its badness (ibid.: 315).4
Why, Evans-Pritchard wondered, were the Azande not interested in
drawing the kind of conclusions a Westerner would draw or in
'scien-tifically' testing their oracle? He concluded that the
explanation must be that Azande are "dominated by an
overwhelmingfaith" in tradition (ibid.: 318). They "make the same
kind of observations as we would make", but these observations "are
always subordinated to their beliefs" (ibid.). So, for
Evans-Pritchard it is not so much their actions that make Azande
different from 'us Westerners'. In fact Azande "act very much as we
would act in like circumstances". What makes them different though
is their traditional beliefs. Their actions are "subordinated" to
these strange beliefs and it is this that accounts for their
behaviour. If you would accept these strange, traditional beliefs,
these "mystical notions" (ibid.: 320), you could not but admit that
in these terms Azande "reason excellently" and "display great
ingenuity in explaining away the failures and inequali-ties of the
poison oracle and experimental keenness in testing it" (ibid.: 338;
emphasis added). But, of course, as a Westerner you cannot accept
these beliefs because they are obviously mistaken.
Are Zande Beliefs 'Objectively Irrational'?
Most participants in the British rationality debate - in which
the Zande-case played a prominent part ~ were in agreement that
Zande oracular beliefs are 'objectively irrational', although there
were some differences among the authors about what rationality
criteria they exactly fail to meet. Mainly it is the 'closed'
character of the beliefs attributed to the Azande which was held to
be objectively irrational. Azande are supposed to maintain their
beliefs iq oracles and witchcraft against experience by a series of
ad hoc arguments which render them irrefutable. In this sense Zande
culture is supposed to be different from Western, scientific
culture. As Robin Horton put it:
(I)n traditional cultures there is no developed awareness of
alterna-tives to the established body of theoretical tenets;
whereas in scien-tifically oriented cultures, such an awareness is
highly developed.
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 97
( ... ) (A)bsence of any awareness makes for an absolute
acceptance of the established theoretical tenets, and removes any
possibility of questioning them. In these circumstances, the
established tenets invest the believer with a compelling force
(Horton 1970: 153-4; emphasis added).
One of the few deviating voices in the debate was that of the
sociologist of science Barry Barnes, who argued that Horton's
description of cultural differences in terms of 'open' and 'closed'
societies does not hold much water. When we put these rationalist
distinctions under a microscope, he claimed, they will turn out to
be matters of degree, not of essence. So when we look
open-mindedly, the alleged cultural differences between scientist
and primitive are fading away (Barnes 1969: 97). We will find that
Levi-Strauss's description of the 'savage mind' as the mind of a
bricoleur (Levi-Strauss 1966) does apply as well to the mind of the
scientist (Barnes 1969: 98-99; 1973: 187).
(A)s the objective irrationality of Azande is generally held to
consist in their 'ad hocery', one might compare their beliefs ( ...
) with the beliefs of classical physics and the 'ad hocery' of
Planck and Lorentz. Sociologically, the situations are amorphous
(Barnes 1972b: 378).
What we have here, then, are two opposing views of cultural
differences and similarities. What both views have in common,
though, is that the nature of cultural differences and similarities
can be described in terms of beliefs. The majority point of view
has it that the difference between Western culture and 'traditional
cultures' is defined by the fact that Western beliefs are open to
rational criticism, while 'traditional cultures' are 'closed'
because they are dominated by an 'overwhelming faith' in beliefs
that have been handed. down of old. Put differently, according to
this view the difference between Western and 'traditional' culture
is constituted by the fact that Western culture has
institutionalized rationality (Jarvie 1984) while 'traditional
cultures' have not. The minority view -represented here by Barnes -
plays down the alleged cultural differences by arguing that, from a
sociological point of view, Western culture is not that 'open',
while 'traditional cultures' are not that 'closed'.
Noble though the latter strategy may seem at first sight, the
question
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should be raised nevertheless whether a strategy aiming at
reducing the differences between cultures is helpful in
understanding these cultures in their own terms? My claim is that
it is not. If we really are to understand cultures against the
background of the experiences of their members, we should not
reduce cultural differences, but magnify them instead. Let me
explain.
The Principle of Humanity
Both the majority and the minority views outlined above are
formulated within the same frame of reference, which is founded
upon some or other variant of what Grandy (1973) has called the
Principle of Humanity. This noble point of departure requires that
in an anthropological description of other cultures "the imputed
pattern of relations among beliefs, desires and the world be
(described) as similar to our own as possible" (Grandy 1973: 443;
emphasis added). This Principle, says Putnam, is:
the basis of all the various maxims of interpretive charity or
'benefit of the doubt', such as 'interpret them so that their
beliefs come out reasonable in the light of what they have been
taught and have ex-perienced', or Vieo's ( ... ) directive to
maximize the humanity of the person being interpreted" (Putnam
1981: 117).
According to Steven Lukes this point of departure "prescribes
the minim-izing of unintelligibility - that is, of unintelligible
agreement and dis-agreement" (Lukes 1982: 264). It has, Lukes goes
on to say, "the sin-gular virtue of being the principle we do in
practice apply in the interpre-tation and translation of beliefs"
(ibid.; emphasis added). If Lukes is right and this is what we,
that is we anthropologists, are actually doing, then my suggestion
is we better stop doing it. Instead of minimizing
unintelligibility, let us start maximizing it for a while, for the
benefit of our discipline. Why? The answer is in the last
italicized passage of the Lukes-quotation, which expresses the
supposition that the description of a culture in the language of
another culture is basically a matter of trans-lation of beliefs.
It was this supposition, I submit, whieh kept Evans-Pritchard from
understanding the Zande poison oracle against the back-ground of
Zande culture. We have seen that, despite his warnings that
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Azande have no theories about their oracles and do not feel the
need for doctrines, and despite his intention to concentrate on
behaviour and not on beliefs, Evans-Pritchard still could only
conceive Zande behaviour as "subordinated to beliefs" and guided by
"an overwhelming faith" in tradition. Likewise Robin Horton,
referring to Evans-Pritchard's study, maintained that 'traditional
cultures' are 'closed', because there is no developed awareness of
alternatives to "the established body of theore-.tical tenets". If
these examples are representative - my claim is that they are - the
conclusion must be that the presupposition that all cultures do
have 'an established system of beliefs' and that they can be
adequately described by explicating these beliefs, which 'somehow'
guide the beha-viour of the participants, has great impact on the
intellectual conscience of Western anthropologists. Apparently it
is inconceivable to them that behaviour is not ultimately, somehow
guided by 'a system of beliefs'. That is why they will assume that
a culture can be described in terms of these beliefs. What at first
sight may strike the eye as "madness" will appear to have "method
in't" as soon as the anthropologist has penetrated the 'system of
beliefs' behind it. The Zande case, however, has taught us so far
that this supposition will lead the anthropologist into serious
trouble in that not his object but he himself will appear as
incoherent, maintaining simultaneously that the people he is
describing have no theories but are nevertheless guided by them.
Logically the anthropologist has two alternative ways of responding
to this difficulty.
1. He can hold on to the assumption and: try to formulate a
hypo-thesis to the effect that his incoherence is only on the
surface because 'somehow' the members of this culture are indeed
guided by beliefs. (This is what Evans-Pritchard did by maintaining
that the Azande were guided by faith in traditional beliefs.) 2. He
can doubt the validity of the assumption and raise the question
what a culture would look like in which human actions are not
guided by bel iefs.
My appeal to magnify cultural differences and to maximize
unintelligi-bility - at least temporarily - implies a choice for
the second alter-native. As I am well aware of the controversial
nature of this claim, let me explain its meaning by an example.
This will show that an appeal to maximize unintelligibility is not
a plea to give up a comparative science
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of cultures, but a definition of its epistemological
preconditions.
The Akha Zall
In a splendid paper Deborah Tooker (1990) has given us an
example of the way in which an anthropologist can avoid misleading
analogies with her own culture when describing other traditions.
Drawing on ethno-graphic material from the Akha of Northern
Thailand and some other Asian societies, she shows that in the Akha
relation to tradition beliefs and theoretical tenets are not
relevant.
Tooker begins by establishing that in Akha language there is no
equivalent for the Western terms 'religion' or 'ethnic'. The
closest Akha term, which combines connotations a Westerner would
call 'religious' with connotations a Westerner would call 'ethnic',
is a word meaning 'types of people' (Tooker 1990: 800).
For the Akha, 'types of people' are distinguished by their zan.
Identity switches are seen as switches of behaviour or zan whereby
one 'becomes' ( ... ) one of another 'type of people' ( ... ). A
switch of ethno-religious identity is not a statement that one's
beliefs ( ... ) have changed, but rather a statement that one's
behaviour (one's zan) has changed" (ibid.).
Thus to be an Akha ethnically is: to practise Akha zan. Roughly
zan can be translated as 'tradition'. The term covers a set of
practices which a Westerner would characterize as
heterogeneous.
Zan includes things that we would term religious practices, such
as how to worship spirits, how to honour the ancestors and how to
carry out rituals, but it also includes what we would call
techno-logical practices such as how to plant rice properly, how to
construct a house, where to keep domestic animals, or how to boil
eggs. In ad-dition, zan includes rules for action, such as how to
take rice out of the rice steamer, how to interact with your
father-in-law, what kind of clothes you are to wear and at what
age, or in what order you are to marry in relation to your siblings
(ibid.: 803).
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 101
For the Akha, you cannot believe or not believe in zan. You can
only 'carry' or 'not carry' zan, like a mule can carry or not carry
a load of rice (ibid.). 'Carrying' Akha zan makes you into an Akha;
not 'carrying' Akha zan makes you into someone else. If you do not
carry Akha zan, you are not permitted to live in an Akha village.
Conversely, if you do not live in an Akha village, you cannot, for
the most part, 'carry' Akha zan, since the proper structure is not
there, and the proper people are not present (ibid.: 805).5
Behaviour is evaluated as either correct or incorrect in relation
to zan. The Akha frequently argue about how to carry out zan
properly. In this they focus on the appropriateness of behaviour
(as opposed to the truth value of conceptions relating to it). For
the Akha, truth and falsehood are not an issue, as far as zan is
concerned (ibid.)
Thus, if one carries out the proper procedures with the proper
speech attached in the proper circumstances with the proper
participants, one is 'lining up' with zan (ibid.).
The Akha are by no means exceptional in this. Similar
observations have been made by Watson (1988) for ancient China, by
Lewis (1980) for contemporary New Guinea and by the historian Robin
Lane Fox for ancient Rome (Fox 1988). Like Tooker, Watson opposes
the Chinese emphasis on 'orthopraxy' (correct practice) to the
Western emphasis on 'orthodoxy' (correct beliet).
(T)he proper performance of rites in the accepted sequence, was
of paramount importance in determining who was and who was not
deemed to be fully 'Chinese'. Performance, in other words, took
precedence over belief - it mattered little what one believed ( ...
) as long as the rites were performed properly. (oo.) (T)he
ideological domain in China does not assume universal belief or
unquestioned acceptance of the truth (Watson 1988: 4 and 10).
Likewise, speaking about ancient Rome, Robin Lane Fox
asserts:
By modern historians, pagan religion has been defined as
essentially a matter of cults. ( ... ) Pagans performed rites but
professed no creed or doctrine. They did pay detailed acts of cult,
(. oo), but they were not committed to revealed beliefs in the
strong Christian sense of the
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102 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
term. They were not exhorted to faith ( ... ) (Fox 1988:
31).
And in his discussion of the Gnau ritual of penis bleeding,
Lewis noticed that the Gnau (who live in the West Sepik Province of
New Guinea), when asked why they practised this ritual usually gave
"no reason but tradition, that it was the right thing to do, one
that their forefathers had taught them" (Lewis 1980: 2).6
Sometimes, however, they did give a reason, but in those cases
"they did not overtly link the custom and the reason" (ibid.;
emphasis added). In his discussion of the ritual Lewis comes to the
conclusion that "(w)hat is clear and explicit about ritual is how
to do it - rather than its meaning" (Lewis 1980: 19).
'Beliefs' are inferred
Just like the Zande, the ancient Chinese, the ancient Romans and
the New Guinea Gnau, the Akha have no theories about their
traditional practices nor do they express a need for doctrines on
this point. Unlike Evans-Pritchard (and many other
anthropologists), however, Tooker was very much aware of the fact
that the 'beliefs' and 'theoretical tenets' Western anthropologists
are trained to infer from the behaviour they observe are just that:
inferred beliefs which probably tell us more about the
anthropol-ogist's own culture than about the culture she is
studying. She endorses Dan Sperber's warning that:
It is a truism - but one worth keeping in mind - that bel iefs
cannot be observed. Ethnographers do not perceive that the people
they study believe this or that; they infer it from what they hear
and see. Their attributions of bel iefs are therefore never
uncontrovertible. Both the way in which the content of a belief is
rendered and the description of the people's attitude as one of
'belief are open to challenge (Sperber 1985: 45).
Tooker noticed that when she did what she was trained to do,
viz. when she inferred Akha 'beliefs' from their rituals, myths or
statements of ritual specialists "ordinary villagers would often
contradict those inferred 'beliefs' or just be uncertain about them
without showing any desire for certainty" (Tooker 1990: 813;
italics in original). Unlike Evans-Pritchard,
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 103
though, Tooker did not conclude from this that the Akha 'belief
system' was 'incoherent'. On the contrary, she decided that if the
Akha have no specific theories about their traditional practices,
no 'dogma's so to speak, then the Akha relation to tradition should
better not be described in terms of a 'belief system', because
'belief system' presupposes a web of propositions in which a
certain account of the world is confirmed as true. Put differently,
in terms which are mine, not Tooker's: as the Akha, or for that
matter the Zande, the Gnau, the ancient Chinese, and the Ancient
Romans, have no epistemic attitude towards their tradition
(to-wards the world?), describing their relation towards tradition
in terms of a system of beliefs would amount to imposing a
misleading analogy on it.
Another misleading analogy Tooker refuses to make is Horton's
characterization of 'traditional societies' as 'closed'. The
problem with this characterization, she says, is that while the
'traditional' may rightly be associated with a certain type of
rigidity, Westerners are inclined to immediately associate this
rigidity with inflexible beliefs. In fact, she goes on to assert,
the situation may be quite reverse (ibid.: 815). If so incli-ned,
the Akha may speculate freely about the meaning of traditional
practices and many different answers may be given. This does not
con-cern the Akha at all as long as traditional practices are
carried out proper-ly. So, indeed Akha society is less 'closed'
than Horton would have it, but for a different reason than Barnes
did presume. Speculation is free because it has no consequences for
public behaviour. Beliefs about 'how the world is' have no bearing
on the wayan Akha should behave proper-ly (ibid. 813).
(W)hile, on the one hand, there is no great concern about
'beliefs' attached to zan, precisely because this concern is
lacking villagers did not hesitate to make alternative statements
about the meaning of zan, thus illustrating a sceptical capacity.
They were not, however, concerned about which statement was the
'true' interpretation, and which statements were false (ibid.: 814;
italics in original).7
On the nature of 'meaningful action'
At the end of her paper Tooker suggests that one way in which we
can
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104 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
describe cultural differences is by using 'relationship to
tradition' as a comparative term (ibid.: 816). This seems a useful
suggestion, as 'relati-onship to tradition' was the issue that gave
Evans-Pritchard so much trouble in understanding the Zande poison
oracle against the background of Zande culture. Can we understand
Evans-Pritchard's difficulties against the background of his own
culturally defined relationship to tradition?
Obviously Evans-Pritchard was taking the structure of the
relation-ship to tradition as a constant, which is constituted by
two assumptions:
1. Tradition is defined by a set of beliefs. 2. Human actions
are the expression of underlying beliefs. (So, traditional
behaviour is the expression of beliefs that are handed down by the
ancestors.)
As an illustration of the crucial importance of the second
factor, let us look briefly into Peter Winch's criticism of the way
in which Michael Oakshott in his paper 'The Tower of Babel'
(1948-9) has defined moral action. In this paper Oakshott
distinguished two forms of moral action, viz. (a) "the reflective
application of a moral rule" and (b) "a habit of affection and
behaviour" (Oakshott, quoted by Winch 1958: 58). In habitual
morality, Oakshott says, there is no question of consciously
ap-plying a rule of behaviour nor of expression of a moral ideal.
Habitual moral action consists of acts, according with certain
habits of behaviour, which are not learned by precept but by
"living with people who habitu-ally behave in a certain manner"
(Oakshott, quoted by Winch 1958: 58). It is the second category to
which Winch objects. In this category, he says, Oakshott is wrongly
blurring the boundary between human learning and animal learning.
Of course Winch is not denying that humans do acquire routines. But
he emphasizes that routine behaviour should not be explained
(ultimately that is) as a matter of habit or routine.
It is only because human actions exemplify rules that we can
speak of past experience as relevant to current behaviour. If it
were merely a question of habits, then our current behaviour might
certainly be influenced by the way in which we had acted in the
past: but that would be just a causal influence" (Winch 1958:
62).
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 105
From the fact that Winch links rules to reflexion it appears
that he con-ceives of rules as essentially discursive. To be sure,
Winch faithfully follows Wittgenstein by stating that rules "arise
in the course of con-duct", but to this he adds that:
the nature of conduct of which they arise can only be grasped as
an embodiment of those principles (emphasis added). The notion of a
principle ( ... ) of conduct and the notion of meaningful action
are in-terwoven (Winch 1958: 63; italics in original).
Winch's argument enables us to unearth the cultural
presuppositions underlying Evans-Pritchard's difficulties in
understanding the Zande poison oracle against the background of
Zande relation to tradition. Two basic assumptions are important
here:
1. Human behaviour differs from animal behaviour in that it is
mean-ingful. 2. Meaningful behaviour is the expression of a rule
that can - in principle - be rendered propositionally.
Conversely, these assumptions read that if behaviour can not be
con-ceived of as the expression of propositional knowledge this
behaviour is not meaningful and therefore not fully human. The
Principle of Huma-nity, however, which from the Enlightenment
onwards has inspired the western conception of anthropos requires
that we "maximize the humani-ty" of the others being interpreted'
by "interpret(ing) them so that their beliefs come out reasonable
in the light of what they have been taught and have experienced"
(emphasis added). This is what Evans-Pritchard did and this is why
he failed in understanding the Azande against the back-ground of
their relationship to tradition. Maximizing intelligibility - at
least in this case - proved to be a counter-productive
strategy.
Changing the terms of description
In the West tradition is basically defined in terms oftradional
beliefs, and traditional behaviour is taken to be an expression of
these beliefs. This is to say that traditional behaviour
presupposes knowledge of these be-
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106 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
liefs. Put in a more general way: (traditional) behaviour
presupposes propositional knowledge. Therefore the Western
relationship to tradition can be defined as an epistemic one.
The traditions described by Evans-Pritchard, Tooker, Watson,
Lewis and Fox, however different they may be in other respects,
have one thing in common: they have no epistemic relationship to
tradition. So the conclusion must be that 'revolutionary'
anthropology, by concentrating on the beliefs of societies with a
non-epistemic relation to tradition, has changed the former's terms
of description beyond recognition.
By thematizing (tradition) as (a) belief-guided and
theoretically foun-ded set of practices, the very terms of
description (are transformed). Practical certainties are provided
with something they never had or never needed: a theoretical
foundation (Balagangadhara 1994: 367).
How then should the relationship to tradition of these societies
be descri-bed? Defining it as 'non-epistemic' would again depict it
in function of a Western template. As 'orthopraxy' seems to be the
main focal point of this relationship, maybe 'performative' would
be a proper term to descri-be it. However, this is only a name and
a name does not tame the ob-scureness of this unknown attitude.
Fortunately not, I hasten to add. One of the preconditions to get
out of the stalemate into which 'revolutionary' anthropology has
boxed itself is that we (that is: we Western anthropolo-gists) are
prepared - at least temporarily - to maximize un-intelligi-bility,
instead of reducing other cultures to mirror images of the West in
the name of a Principle of Humanity, noble though it may sound. We
do not have to grant the others 'humanity'. They are fully human
but they are different from us. It is us (us Westerners) that have
this peculiar problem to understand human differences. As a part of
our religious heritage we believe that all men are created equal.
That is why the Prin-ciple of Humanity applies to them all. But how
do we know? How are we are so well acquainted with 'creation' that
we can so dogmatically assert this 'equality of Man'? (Please note
that I am talking here about similari-ties and dissimilarities and
not about the moral and political problem of equivalence!) We have
no idea how it must be to live in a society in which actions are
not guided by beliefs but by tradition. But this is no reason to
deny its existence because such a society would not be fully
'human'. We simply should acknowledge that we have no idea. Of
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 107
course we would like to know (although we do not have to like
what we will see). That is why we badly need descriptions of these
experiences against the background of these cultures themselves. We
have to be told what a performative relation to tradition boils
down to at an experiential level because we have no idea. So a
conditio sine qua non for turning anthropology into a viable
comparative science of cultures is that mem-bers of other cultures
participate in this project by not simply adopting Western concepts
(and implicitly adopting' the assumptions clustered "around them)
but by digging into the descriptive resources of their own
cultures. A comparative science of cultures can only take off when
it has at its disposal "multiple descriptions given by members from
different cultures of both themselves and others against the
background of their own cultures" (Balagangadhara 1994: 441). As
for instance Deborah Tooker has proved, neither the colour nor the
passport of the social scientist matter much here, except the
ability to describe socio-cultural phenomena against the background
of culture-specific experiences (ej Pinxten et al 1988: 21). The
strategy to maximize unintelligibility is directed at the
acknowledgement that cultures are profoundly different and that at
the moment we do not even know what these differences consist
of.
Learning and meta-learning
What are the implications of this argument for the development
of a theory of culture, specifying what makes human differences
into cultural differences? The prospects for such a project may now
seem even less promising than before, as we have to take into
account the intransitive nature of relations of similarity and
difference, a logical point that has been systematically overlooked
until now. So we have to take into ac-count that the way in which
culture A differs from culture B is different from the way in which
culture A differs from culture C, etc. Not only that. When we have
come this far, should our conclusion from the com-parison between
Evans-Pritchard's and Tooker's analysis not be that the experience
of difference is intransitive too? That is to say: should we not
decide that the differences between culture A and .B are
experienced differently by members of both cultures? Now, if
culture A is a culture with an epistemic attitude to tradition and
culture B is a culture with a
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108 HARRY V AN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
performative attitude, we can predict that in culture A the
differences between both cultures will be experienced as a
dissimilarity of beliefs. However, in what way differences are
experienced in culture B we do not know, until the members of this
culture will describe their experiences for us. If such is the
situation, how then are we to formulate a theory of culture when
even the basic materials are not available? It is this problem
which the Department of Comparative Science of Cultures at the
Univer-sity of Gent is currently trying to tackle. Although this
project is still under construction, it is possible nevertheless to
give a provisional outline of the basic principles which guide it.
Brietly put, these principles are the following.
It is· possible to formulate a theory of culture which takes
into ac-count the intransitive nature of relations of difference by
conceiving of cultures in terms of learning processes and
meta-learning processes. Following Balagangadhara (1994: 442), I
will broadly define learning as "the way in which an organism makes
its environment habitable". Lear-ning, for short, is "an activity
of making a habitat" (ibid.). In order to make a habitat, a human
being has to cope with two kinds of environ-ment: (a) nature and
(b) human groups. All human beings learn how to make a habitat when
they are socialized into members of some group. In the available
literature socialization is mostly depicted as a set of proces-ses
in which the resources of the group are transmitted to the learning
human being. There is, however, another aspect involved in
socialization which is often overlooked. By focusing on the
transmission of the resour-ces of the group, the socialization
process is conceived of exclusively from the vantage-point of the
social izing agents. When looked at from the point of view of the
human organism who is being socialized, though, the picture is
slightly different. This human organism is not only instructed in
the lore of his group. It also learns how to learn. (Let us call
this learning how to learn 'meta-learning'.)
The Nicomachean Ethics as an anthropological source
At this point I have to introduce another element in the
discussion. Al-though all human organisms have the genetically
programmed capacity to learn, they are not genetically programmed
to learn in any specific way (Balagangadhara 1994: 444). Part of
the human genetic make-up is that
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 109
humans are able to learn in many different ways, producing
different kinds of knowledge as a result. This fact has already
been recognized by Aristotle, who in his Nicomachean Ethics
distinguished three kinds of knowledge, viz. episteme
(,contemplation'), techne and phronesis. Al-though episteme was not
the same as our 'theory' and techne was very unlike our
'technology' (see Caws 1979; Mitcham 1979), at least these terms do
sound familiar. The third kind of knowledge, however, phrone-sis,
does not ring a bell at all. With this term Aristotle referred to a
kind of prudential wisdom, to do with choice, a choice which is
shaped by the social practices of the community (Bernstein 1983:
54). That is to say, the term referred to a kind of knowledge to do
with relation to tradition. One could learn this kind of knowledge,
said Aristotle, by letting oneself be guided by the experience and
tradition of one's community.
(W)e ought to attend to the undemonstrated sayings and opinions
of experienced and older people or of people of practical wisdom
not less then to demonstrations; for practical experience has given
them an eye they see aright (Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, 11; GBWW
8: 393).
This is not the place to discuss this issue at length. I only
mentioned it here to draw attention to the fact that in the culture
of which Aristotle was a member relationship to tradition was not
taken to be guided by episteme, which, however different from our
'theory', anyhow was a kind of propositional knowledge.
Relationship to tradition then was not an epistemic one. Again, we
do not know what was the nature of the kind of "practical
experience" Aristotle was referring to. Maybe it was kin-dred to
the kind of practical experience that guides the performative
relationship to tradition of the Azande, the Akha, the Gnau, the
ancient Romans and the ancient Chinese, or maybe it was not. At the
moment we do not know. Only further research can tell us that. We
do know, how-ever, that in his culture the three kinds of knowledge
which Aristotle distinguished existed separately from each other.
Each was constricted to a different walk of life, so to speak.
Episteme, for instance 'belonged' to the sphere of the bios
theoretik6s, while phronesis belonged to the sphere of the bios
praktik6s. Man had to make a choice which one to follow. Man was
free to restrict himself to the bios praktik6s. In that case he
could tind fulfilment in the happiness of performing virtuous acts
and win
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110 HARRY VAN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
the deserved renown of his fellow-citizens for that. But man
could also aim higher by devoting himself to the bios theoretikos
(Held 1995: 240-241). This higher aim, however, was supposed to be
granted only to some, and these happy few, moreover, could not
devote their lives en-tirely to contemplation, as their status as
citizens. required that they at least would perform a proper amount
of virtuous public acts. When performing them, they could not be
guided by episteme (which was only concerned with 'the
unchanging'). In public life, they had to be guided by a kind of
practical reason which told them what would be the proper conduct
under the circumstances.
Cultures as configurations of learning
Back now to the issue of learning and meta-learning. When it is
sociali-zed, I argued, the human organism not only learns the lore
of its culture. It also learns how to learn. If the lore of its
culture is parcelled out over separate walks of life (as was the
case in Aristotle's Greece), each with its own kind of knowledge,
then the human organism, when being sociali-zed, will learn
different ways of learning. That is to say: it will acquire
different meta-learning strategies, which should be applied
according to the proper circumstances. So, for instance, in
Aristotle's culture the member of the polis had to learn how to
acquire phronesis by learning 'practically' from people who were
experienced in matters of public life. And, were he a philosopher,
he had to learn how to learn 'theoretically' from wise men who were
experienced in natural philosophy. Above all, however, he had to
learn what particular learning strategy he should use under the
proper circumstances. Theoretical learning, for instance, was of
little use in matters of proper public behaviour.
When we look next to a culture with an epistemic attitude to
tradi-tion, all this is very different. As we have established, in
such a culture meaningful human behaviour is supposed to be an
expression of 'unde-rlying' propositional knowledge. That is to say
that in this type of culture the kind of knowledge embodied in
phronesis is subordinated to theoreti-cal knowledge. A similar
observation has been made by Gadamer as re-gards the subordination
of both techne and phronesis to 'theory'.
In all the debates of the last century practice was understood
as an
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 111
application of science to technical tasks ( ... ). It degrades
practical reason to technical control (Gadamer, quoted by Bernstein
1983: 39; emphasis added).
In a similar vein Habermas has argued that in the West "we are
no longer able to distinguish between practical and technical
power" (Habermas 1973: 255).
This subordination of freeness to 'theory' in Western culture
may explain the difficulties which Evens-Pritchard faced when he
tried to 'reduce the puzzlement' of the Zande posion oracle. Azande
have no theory about the oracle, he said. But then, how could their
behaviour be explained? Obviously Evens-Pritchard was unable to see
the Zande rela-tionship to tradition as the embodiment of a kind of
knowledge, acquired by attending to "the undemonstrated sayings and
opinions of experienced and older people or of people of practical
wisdom". This 'blindness' was caused by the implicit presupposition
that at least as far as the acquisition of knowledge is concerned
all men are created equal (or, in a more fashionable jargon, that
the learning capacities of all human beings are genetically
programmed in the same way). As Tooker, Watson, Lewis, Fox and
Aristotle have argued, however, this implicit presupposition is
mistaken.
What then are the implications of these brief and tentative
remarks for the formulation of a theory of culture? Given the fact
that human beings are genetically programmed to learn, but that it
is their group which teaches them to learn in a specific way, I
suggest - following Balagangadhara 1994, chapter 11 - to describe a
culture in terms of a specific configuration of learning and
meta-learning. To give an example, this is to say that, for
instance, Aristotle's culture can be defined in terms of a specific
configuration of learning and meta-learning processes in which each
learning process applies to a particular walk of life. In these
configuration a number of meta-learning processes (let us follow
Aristotle here and suppose there are three) co-exist, no one
dominating the other, each having its own walk of life for its
domain.
Western culture, on the contrary, can be defined in terms of a
con-figuration of learning and meta-learning processes in which one
kind of learning and meta-learning (viz. theoretical learning) has
gained domi-nance ()ver the other ones. This is not to say that in
Western culture these other kinds of learning have disappeared
altogether. But it is to say that
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112 HARRY V AN DEN BOUWHUIJSEN
in Western culture these other kinds of learning are
'subordinated' to theoretical learning and to the kind of knowledge
produced by it. They have to express themselves in terms defined by
theoretical learning. They have, so to speak, to pose as its
derivatives. The effect will be that these other kinds of learning
and the knowledge produced by them will be conceived of as
applications of theoretical learning and knowledge.
Briefly put, the proposal put forward here says that the
emergence and crystallization of a culture can be described in
terms of the emer-gence and crystallization of a configuration of
learning and meta-learning. The focus of culture studies should
accordingly be on the different ways in which human beings acquire
knowledge. This 're-focusing' of culture studies promises well the
opening of a big black box, containing all kinds of treasures that
have remained hidden until now. Human inventiveness and creativity
may turn out to be much, much richer than we have dreamt of in our
theories until now. Aristotle may only have seen a tiny sample.
Human knowledge may turn out to be a gold mine, which has only been
superficially explored to this very day. A crucial question which
has to be answered, of course, is what brings about a configuration
of learning and meta-learning? In the present paper this issue can
not be discussed. (But see for some path breaking insights on this
matter, Balagangadhara 1994, especially chapter 11.) The only claim
I have made here is that by conceiving of culture in terms of a
configuration of learning and meta-learning a testable theory of
cultures can be devised, which can explain both fundamental
differences between groups of people and the fact that differences
are experienced differently. Such a theory will allow us to hold on
to the Psychic Unity of Mankind (all men are genetically
pro-grammed to learn), while simultaneously allowing us to account
for the fundamental differences between groups of people (man is
not pro-grammed to learn in any specific way). Moreover, such a
theory will satisfy the conditions set forth by Raymond Firth. It
will allow us to hear what people are saying, instead of hearing
our own echos. And it will allow us to see what people are doing,
instead of seeing our own after-images. At first we may not
understand what we hear. We may not even believe our eyes. But this
is no reason for 'epistemological hypochon-dria'. It is the
precondition for a comparative science of cultures.
U niversiteit Gent
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HUMAN AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES 113
NOTES
1. To get an impression of the debate, see the papers in Wilson
(ed.) 1970, Benn and Mortimore (eds.) 1976, Geraets (ed.) 1979, J.
W. Meiland and M. Krausz (eds.) 1982 and M. Hollis and S. Lukes
(eds.) 1982.
2. 'Zande' is the singular noun and adjectival form of the word
and 'Azande' is the plural noun.
3. So strange is this lack of theory that on the next page
Evens-Pritchard once more repeats his warning: "I must repeat that
Azande themselves have no theory of oracles. Oracles can reveal
hidden things to man. The Zande feels no need to explain why they
can make their revelations. He never asks himself this question"
(Evens-Pritchard 1937: 321-2).
4. In itself this argument is perfectly logical. It has the
structure of the modus tollens. Evens-Pritchard acknowledges that
Zande "mystical notions are eminently coherent, being interrelated
by a network of logical ties, and are so ordered that they never
too crudely contradict sensory experience" (Evens-Pritchard 1937:
320). However, he says, Zande presuppositions are wrong. "The Zande
is immersed in a sea of mystical notions, and if he speaks about
his poison oracle he must speak in a mystical idiom (ibid.).
5. A similar case from contemporary Japan was described by
Sharon Traweek. InJapan "(p)eople who have been abroad for more
than about five years are said to no longer have a Japanese soul
(ki) and not to be able to lead other Japanese because they lack
crucial skills (lwra-ge); they and their children are generally
treated with disdain, at best" (Traweek 1992: 457).
6. I would like to emphasize that to remark about a practice
that 'it is the custom' is certainly to reflect on the status of
the practice and not merely to report it (if Lloyd 1990: 20).
7. The same observation has been made for ancient Rome by
Balagangadhara 1994 (chapters 2 and 9.5).
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Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Great Books of the Western World,
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F.H. (1968), 'Culture and Civilization in Modem Times', in Ph.
T.
Wiener (ed.) Dictionmy of the Hist01Y of Ideas, vol. I, 613-621.
Barnes B. (1969), 'Paradigms - scientific and social', Man 4,
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